Key Master Data Management Functionalities

Master Data Management system delivers consolidated, complete and accurate view of business critical master information to all the operational and analytical systems across the enterprise. There have been numerous blogs, articles and whitepapers about how MDM helps organizations achieve business value, different approaches companies take to implement MDM and best practices followed.

In this blog post, I am trying to list down some of the important features the Master Data Management product (or the MDM solution in general) should have so that the organizations implementing MDM can realize maximum benefit from the initiative in a short duration of time.

Here is my list of key MDM features.

DATA MODEL

Out of the box support for multiple domains like Customer (including partners, suppliers), Product, Location and Account.

Efficiently manage relationship between domains (Customer to Account, Customer to Product, and Customer to Location etc).

MDM product should be able to collect key data elements of master record which is getting added and find duplicates in the repository. This can be achieved by having good fuzzy search algorithm built into the product (As pointed out by Henrik).

Ability to integrate with existing active directory products of the organization.

Easy configuration of data visibility rules (Who can see what? Who can change what?)

I know this may not be a complete list. So, I request you to provide your valuable comments about the features listed here and your inputs about any prominent characteristics which I have failed to recognize.

Indeed, search plays an important role in avoiding duplicate records and I am glad you pointed it out.

There was hardly any implementation where I didn’t have to do search customization. Each customer has their own search criteria and as we move to product and account domains the possibilities are enormous. The product should have easier way to configure search fields, use fuzzy logic as you pointed out to bring right set of records to avoid duplication.

For me, the list is pretty complete. However, in my personal list, Data Governance (eg. workflow, approvals, etc.) are always high on the list. That’s the organizational part of MDM which is sometimes underexstimated in MDM implementations.
Or is this covered with your requirement “Option to build intelligent rules to notify important events associated with master data.” in the Integration section?

Data Governance for sure is an indispensable item to be considered. I have seen the workflows and approval processes playing very important role during MDM implementation whose focus is around managing product master data. (I did talk about this in my earlier post – Establishing Effective Product Master Data Management).

Yes, as you pointed out rightly, configuration of business process via workflows and setting up proper approval process is an important aspect to consider while shopping for an MDM product. I did have this in my mind when I said – ‘Option to build intelligent rules to notify important events associated with master data’. (Probably, need to re-phrase it a little bit).

Regarding your comment on Business rules, were you interested to see them in the data model section?